McMaster University Centre for Engineering and Public Policy brought to public notice an Apr. 29, 2010, “Climate of Change” Symposium: “Making the Lakes Great”. The stated objectives are discussions on actions which will affect Ecosystem Threat Reduction and thereby adapt or improve resilience of the large lakes and also mitigate green house gas emissions and effect.
Although there are technology similarities between the present application and U.S. Ser. No. 11/534,008, the present invention includes process separation between the nitrification, and mineralization for providing continuous, environment-friendly nitrogen (N2) release. Although nitrogen (N2) release is possible with current microbial de-nitrification, it could prove unsatisfactory for addressing the vast quantity of global industrial waste water at hand and curbing global warming because of its necessary release of carbon dioxide and methane green house gases to atmosphere.
Similarly, U.S. Ser. No. 11/534,008 discloses non-microbial ammonia reduction with continuous recirculation contaminant flow where an accumulating rate (mg/l/hr) of fish generated ammonia concentration was negated by an opposite and opposing rate of sonic ammonia molecular dissociation.
Contaminated tertiary waste water, delivered by industry for de-contamination contains significant ammonia or nitrate concentrations which can be reduced to an acceptable regulatory level with either a SMC (sono-molecular conversion) low-volume single molecular dissociation pass, or a high volume with repetitive recirculation molecular dissociation passes.
At a specific rate (mg/l/hr), this invention associates nitrate/nitrite to ammonia while mineralizing organic carbon to ammonia (NH3), thereafter, nitrification, dissociates NH3 to nitrite (NO2), then dissociates nitrite to nitrate (NO3) and finally dissociates nitrate to nitrogen gas (N2) where after the de-contaminated tertiary waste water is ready for discharge into public waterways and/or Great Lakes.
Current microbial processing technology for treating industrial tertiary waste water ammonia consists of two separate microbial processes; the first for ammonia nitrification and the second for nitrate de-nitrification. The device name applied to these two waste water treatment processes is “Sequencing Batch Reactor” (SBR).
For the nitrification-only purpose, the reactor is tagged single-stage and for de-nitrification-only purpose, second-stage.
The Single Stage Reactor performs an aerobic bacteria nitrification process, changing ammonia (NH3) to nitrite (NO2), and then the nitrite to nitrate (NO3). After that, the nitrate (NO3) is transferred into the Second Stage Reactor along with added organic carbon, such as methanol, thereby providing an anoxic substrate for aerobic/anaerobic bacteria to denitrify nitrate (NO3) into nitrogen (N2) gas for atmospheric release. Unfortunately, in performing the conversions, these same bacteria generate carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), which is released into the atmosphere as green house gas.
The role of nitrosomonas, nitrobacter and heterotrophic bacteria resident in a bio filter is highlighted by Steven T. Summerfelt and Mark J. Sharrer of CFFI, who discuss nitrification and de-nitrification bacteria generating CO2.
When ammonia is added to water a large percentage combines with the water molecules forming a combined substance called Ammonium. Ammonia combined this way with water is called NH4N and is ionized, while that which does not combine with water is called non-ionized NH3N. The ratio between the two substances varies with water pH. When pH is high, say 9, the percentage of NH3 is high vs. NH4, and if pH is 6, NH4 is high vs. NH3. A large fraction of CO2 is produced by the nitrification bacteria in the bio filter as they consume 4.6 mg/l of oxygen while producing 5.9 mg/l of CO2 for every 1 mg/l of TAN(NH3N+NH4N) consumed and the heterotrophic bacteria another 1.38 mg/l of CO2 for every 1 mg/l of DO used by nitrification bacteria.